The invention comprises a method for treatment of potato pulp.
Potato pulp is a certain fraction which appears during the potato starch production. The disintegrated, clean potato chips are first introduced into a decanter, the supernatant therefrom being the fruit water, which is further processed; the residue is introduced into a centrifugal sieve, from which two fractions are taken out, i.e. the potato starch fraction and the potato pulp fraction.
This potato pulp fraction consists of arabino galactan, cellulose, pectin, protein and a small amount of starch, and it exhibits a strong water binding capacity. The potato pulp contains only 3-4% dry matter and exhibits a gelly consistency. If exposed to pressure the water content of the potato pulp can be raised to around 10%, and in that case the consistency is like the consistency of marzipan.
The potato pulp has posed a problem to the farmers and to industry. One possibility is discarding the potato pulp, due to the low nutritional value thereof, and in that case an environmental problem arises. Another possibility comprises that the farmer takes the potato pulp back to the farm, in that case, however, it has to be used very soon as a fodder in order to prevent putrefaction, and it can be used only for certain animals. Furthermore, potato pulp is only produced around 3 months a year, which means that the quality of a composed fodder will vary over the year, if potato pulp is used as a fodder ingredient. This is unwanted from the point of view of the fodder producers.
The purpose of the invention is the provision of a cheap and simple conversion of the potato pulp to a nutritionally valuable and stable fodder.
Surprisingly it has been found that this purpose can be achieved by a combination of a cooking and a treatment with a specially selected enzyme.